Superhard materials find applications in tools manufacturing industries for equipping the drill bits, cutters, saws, etc., used for treatment of tough alloys and composites, or in microelectronics as semiconductors.
There are known conventional methods for preparation of synthetic diamonds from mixtures of carbon-containing materials and alloy-catalysts (solvents) for initiation of the diamond synthesis process under conditions of high pressures and high temperatures followed by quenching to ambient temperature, product isolation and chemical purification.
Similarly, there are known conventional methods for preparation of cubic boron nitride (cBN) from mixtures of starting materials and catalysts for initiation of the cBN synthesis process under similar conditions of high pressures and high temperatures followed by quenching to ambient temperature, product isolation and chemical purification. cBN is less hard than diamond, but more resistant to thermal breakdown than diamond.
There has been continuing interest in new superhard materials in efforts to discover superhard materials that are harder than cBN.
Thus, notwithstanding the foregoing, there remains a need for new superhard materials and methods of making them.